CLASS OF 1986 | 2025 | FALL ISSUE
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Greeting Class of 1986,
We, Deb Alter-Starr and Scott Michaud, are thrilled to be the new class secretaries for the Class of 1986! And we’ve got lots to cover, especially since 2026 is our 40th anniversary . . . seems like yesterday we were celebrating Zonker Harris Day on Foss Hill!
For more about me (Scott), see this relatively recent Wesleyan Magazine article. I’ve also attended a happy hour with Susannah Goodman ’87, and talked with Sarah Tilly, Kristin Bluemel, and Ellen Santistevan.
Debbie here. I loved reading classmates’ accomplishments, abundant humor and memories shared. It’s fun to reconnect with my friend Scott from our infamous WestCo dorm, now, allegedly, a hotbed of nudity! I was treated successfully for triple negative breast cancer in 2024, uncovering a BRCA1 gene in our family. (Happy to network on this.) I retired from medical social work, have a nonprofit, Napa Valley to Ukraine, and resumed volunteer work as a Latino community ally, mobilizing our agricultural community to protect immigrants.
On to the news!
To start with, several of us made it to campus for Nietzsch Factor’s 50th anniversary reunion (which was great!) this spring. Over 100 Nietzsch Factor alumni descended upon WESU for a long weekend of reminiscence, celebration, and oh-so-much good-natured heckling. Attendees included 1986 classmates David Weber, Bill Wehrli, and Arnie Cachelin, and Andy Norman ’85/’86.
As an aside, Wesleyan’s women’s Ultimate team—the Vicious Circles—won this year’s D-III national title, playing brilliantly (Go Vicious Circles!)—this is a first for Wesleyan, men or women.
Some sad news:
Sue Erikson-Bidwell shared: “It is with great sadness that I am writing to inform you that I have learned of the passing of a dear classmate of ours, William (Bill) Lanza. Bill passed away in the late winter/early spring of 2022 and leaves behind his loving wife and son, as well as many friends that will miss him. Bill lived a successful and low-key life as an attorney, family man and expert pool player. I have fond memories of freshman year watching late-night TV (M*A*S*H, Twilight Zone, etc.) with Bill and his hall mates from Foss 7. I don’t recall seeing many class notes from the rest of that crew and I hope they are all doing well. After graduation, I have great memories of Bill convincing my husband and I to join his competitive pool team in the Hartford area. In my case, they just needed another warm body to fill out the team. Luckily Bill’s expert playing would cover for my not-so-good skill, but either way it was always a fun night out with friends. It will be a sad reunion year without Bill there to join us.”
The family of William (Bill) Gerber shared unfortunate news in a press release last July: “We are heartbroken to share that our beloved father and husband Bill Gerber passed away at Yale New Haven Hospital at 4:11PM today. . . . To say that there is now a gaping hole in our lives is an understatement. . . . [P]lease take a moment to remember and celebrate someone who was so selfless and who loved his friends, family, job and his hometown of almost 30 years so much. Despite the physical issues he was experiencing as a result of what was determined to be a large, aggressive, malignant brain tumor, he worked long days and attended evening meetings up until the day before he went into the hospital. The Town of Fairfield was incredibly lucky to have him as its leader. And our family was beyond blessed.—Jessica, John and Gillian Gerber”
Bill was the first selectman in Fairfield, Connecticut, and served in public office there for 10 years. He lived there with his wife, Jessica ’90, raising three children, John, Gillian, and Teddy. Teddy died in 2010 from a rare cancer at the age of nine. Since his son’s death, more than $1.6 million for pediatric cancer research has been raised in his honor, according to Bill’s obituary.
Danial “Dan” Handelman passed on April 17, 2025. His friend Dave Calem ’89 said that“Dan really lived the values he learned at Wesleyan.” Dan was known in Portland, Oregon, as a “pioneer of police oversight” and was the co-founding member of Peace and Justice Works, a nonprofit organization that promotes nonviolent conflict resolution. There were many articles written in tribute of Dan. Here are a few:
Remembering Dan Handelman | Portland.gov
Portland lost its top police accountability advocate. Who will fill Dan Handelman’s shoes? – OPB
Remembering Dan Handelman: The Radical Keeper | Street Roots
Portlanders Mourn the Loss of Dan Handelman, Pioneer of Police Oversight – Portland Mercury
Portland Police Watchdog Dan Handelman Dies at 60
Read WW’s Earliest Interview With Dan Handelman
Now some good news:
From Lucy Seham Malatesta: “My husband and I retired this spring and have moved from New Jersey to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, effective last [July]! It’s a big shift after 32 years in the same suburban New Jersey home where we raised our three kids, but we are looking forward to all the nature and culture the Berkshires has to offer. My recent Class of ’86 sightings include traveling to Philadelphia to enjoy Karen Escovitz in her amazing band, BlocoFunk. It was a blast. I also had a lovely reunion with Sarah Tillyas we toured the Morgan Library in NYC and caught up on each other’s lives.”
From Kevin Williamson: “I’ve spent the last three years making a documentary about my neighborhood called The Price of Progress, LAX and Its Neighbors. It’s about all these neighborhoods around LAX that were built in the ’40s and ’50s and were then torn down in the ’60s when LAX expanded. They left all the streets and sidewalks and just leveled the houses, leaving us with all these ghost towns. I’m currently entering it in festivals and am looking for a distributor who can pay for the finishing costs.” Kevin shared the link to his film with us.
From Erika Levy: “I’m still living in New York and loving my work at Teachers College, Columbia University, as a professor of communication sciences and disorders, despite all of the recent turmoil at Columbia. Am receiving fun invitations to present my work in person in Brazil, among other destinations to which we will travel. Both children are in college now, with our daughter graduating from Wesleyan in spring 2026. I definitely plan to be at our 40th(!) Reunion and am very much looking forward to connecting with my classmates there!”
From Ellen Santistevan: “I’ve been doing more motorcycling this year than I have in a long time. I hope one day to understand the internal combustion engine.”
From Bennett Schneider: “I chatted with Michael Roth ’78 about art and activism at the annual Film & Theater Alumni get-together in Los Angeles this June. I went to the event with Lisa Rosen and Wan Yeung MA ’17. Wan and I live very near each other in LA and have dinner together several times a week. I had lunch recently with Al Septien ’85 and Michael Steven Schultz ’85. In my own news, having been teaching workshops on Combining Art & Activism, including one at the Faculty of Arts of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEMéx) in Mexico City. Accordingly, attended the No Kings protest dressed as a hot dog and carrying a rubber chicken. Lastly, does anyone know of a Wesleyan World of Warcraft guild?”
From Lisa Porter: “I am living in NYC where my day job is currently the voice and dialect coach for the national tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I [was] in the Bay Area in August and September playing Suzanne again in an original cast remount of Eureka Day. I recently hiked the Camino in Spain with my sister. I see Shawn Cuddy, James Hallett, and Melinda Newman very often.”
From Hal Phillips: “What ho, WesKids. Sorry to have been aloof but a surfeit of WesExposure of late, and our pending 40th Reunion, moved me to write. And yes, he added selfishly, Bloomsbury will publish another book of mine in January 2026. Sibling Rivalry: How USA vs. Mexico Became the Most Contentious, Co-Dependent Derby in World Futbol arrives just in time for the 2026 World Cup. Fear not: No punches pulled on the politics. Also, the primary editor on this book [is] the inimitable Stephen McDermott Myers ’87.
“Meantime, I experienced a fairly wondrous hang at the April 2025 100 Years of Wesleyan Soccer gala. Total delight to spend time on campus again with David Perryman ’87, David Slade ’87, my co-captain Rob Macrae, Sean Kelley ’85, Bruce McKenna ’84, David Carnoy ’87, Adam Rohdie ’89, Andrew Lacey ’89, John Nathan ’84, Scott Kessel ’88, Eric Apgar ’87, and Vinnie Caride ’85. Let me also report that, early in COVID, the vaunted WesGolf team started holding reunion rounds that engendered, as only golf can, marvelous six-hour hangs with the likes of Ted Galo ’85, Rich Gibbons ’87, John Brais, Stu Remensnyder ’84, Jon Gould, and Matt Shatz ’89.
“I find the irony here to be pretty thick. Sports were so very low-key at Wesleyan during our shared time there, to the point of manifest dismissal. That soccer and golf have helped preserve all these relationships so well strikes me as a notable riposte. Another observation: I can still identify these old men by their postures, their gaits, and laughter. Playing sports together, spending so much time as part of a pack, is a lasting form of intimacy. They don’t talk about that sort of thing in Lord of the Flies.
“I’m in closer touch with five of my Butterfield C, 530C, freshman hall mates: Dr. David Rose lives north of Melbourne with his Australian wife, Dr. Sharon Davis. He got a PhD in biology but has since applied his work life to bioinformatics. . . . Dennis Carboni lives with his wife, Barbara, on outer Cape Cod. He earned a master’s in ecological landscape design but today works boutique construction, manages ice rinks (inclusive of Zamboni driving) and DJs for the cool kids in Provincetown. . . . Dr. John Sledge lives in LA with his wife, Dr. Isabella Sledge. He practiced orthopedic surgery, but today he’s chief scientific officer at a lab that develops blood tests for the early diagnosis of cancer. . . . Dave Terry lives in White Plains, New York, with his wife, Alexandra. He taught high school Spanish for years but today provides translation services to the New York State court system. . . . I live in southern Maine with my wife, Sharon Vandermay. After 10-plus years in daily newspaper and magazine worlds, I continue to operate the content/digital marketing agency I founded in 1997, though I’m slowly transitioning to the more chill, 60-something acts of writing books, visiting my kids in Montana, fronting an alt-country band, and playing the world’s top 100 golf courses (70-odd down, 30 to go).”
R. SCOTT MICHAUD | mazhude32@gmail.com
Debbie ALTER-STARR | alterstarr@gmail.com